Conventional methods for delivering advertisement data typically involve broadcasting messages to mass markets. This is usually described as a “Spray and Pray” approach, wherein the advertisement data is delivered to a wide audience and it is hoped that the advertisement data will be received by a sufficient number of potential consumers that are appropriate targets of the advertisement. Although an advertiser may take steps to ensure that the advertisement data is delivered via channels that traditionally are expected to reach a significant concentration of potential consumers, there is nevertheless little or no means to guarantee that the advertisement data is delivered to most appropriate recipients. An example of conventional mass marketing strategy is delivery of advertisement data through television channels and inclusion of the advertising data into commonly visited Internet websites.
Direct mailing campaigns via traditional mail and via electronic mail are considered to be more accurate in delivering advertisement information to targeted individuals and/or groups. In addition to the conventional electronic mail it is possible to use other electronic message delivery means for delivery of advertisement data, for example SMS-messages (Short Message Service) or MMS-messages (Multi Media Service) that can be delivered via a cellular mobile network. In conjunction with the electronic message delivery means there are two main principles to deliver advertisement data to targeted individuals and/or groups. The advertisement data can be delivered in dedicated advertisement messages or the advertisement data can be added as extra information to other messages that are transferred during a communication session between two or more entities, e.g. the advertisement data can be added to the end of an SMS-message. An entity that is participating a communication session can be e.g. an individual persons or a service. A communication session can be e.g. a person-to-person communication session between two or more persons or a service-to-person communication session in which a server system sends messages to one or more person and/or a person sends messages to the server system. When the advertising data is attached to delivery of other data transmission between entities there is a need to determine which piece of advertisement data is attached to a certain message.
In a solution according to the prior art, a decision to add a certain piece of advertisement data to certain a message is based on a content of the message. For example, if a content of the message is “See you at the mall soon” an advertising system is able to conclude on the basis of the word “mall” that the recipient of the message will probably go to a place where he/she will walk around and, as a consequence, may get thirsty and where it is possible to purchase beverages. Therefore, the advertising system may add the following advertisement data “Drink cool softdrinks” to the end of the message. In many cases a content of a message can be, however, quite non-informative. For example, a content of a response message to the above-mentioned message can be just a brief expression such as “Ok” from which it is hard or even impossible to draw any useful conclusions.
In another solution according to the prior art, a decision to add a certain piece of advertisement data to a certain message is based on profiling related to a sender of the message, to a recipient of the message, and/or to a group or the like to which the sender and/or the recipient belongs. The profiling is accomplished on the basis of information carried by or related to the message. An advertising system or any other system that is arranged to add extra information to messages that are transferred in a communication network should not cause excessive delays in delivery of the messages. Therefore, it is a quite challenging task to accomplish, within a time interval a message is allowed to be held in a server apparatus of an advertising system, a sufficient profiling related to the sender, to the recipient, and/or to the group. Therefore, the amount of work related to selection of an appropriate piece of extra information for a certain message may be too high with respect to the available time.